Wage/Salaries

posted by Bruce Boccardy | 15pt
November 15, 2016

Professor Wolff. Thank you for your work.
You wrote in 2011:
1. "Meanwhile, the capitalist downturn negates itself. Rising unemployment, bankruptcies, and production cutbacks drive down wages and production costs to the point where potential profits lure capitalists back into productive investments and thereby recommence an upturn."
2. Then in an online lecture at the New School, you asserted that the business cycle results lower real wages/salaries until the recovery is realized in the
same time period.
3. Conversely, you wrote in 2012 that what distinguishes the United States from almost every other capitalist experiment is that from 1820 to 1970, as best we can tell from the statistics we have, the amount of money an average worker earned kept rising decade after decade. This is measured in “real wages,” which means the money you earn compared to the prices you have to pay. That’s remarkable. There’s probably no other capitalist system that has delivered to its working class that kind of 150-year history."
3. How can we reconcile downturns including 11 in the post WW Ii period
with declining wages with the assertion that wages increased in the time period of 1820-1970?

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Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus at UMass Amherst and a visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York. Richard Wolff is also a co-founder and active contributor of his non-profit: Democracy at Work